CFP: Who’s Arab? Where’s America?: Interrogating “Arab American”
Middle East Studies Association, November 21-24, 2015, Denver
The boundaries of Arab American studies have always been fluid. As a relatively young field of inquiry, researchers and scholars from a variety of backgrounds and approaches have been welcomed into the discipline. Sometimes the scholarship has included work on communities that may be considered to be outside the purview of a strictly defined Arab America. This panel will feature work that interrogates the label Arab American. Should Arab American studies include research on Arabic-speaking communities that may not self-identify as Arab or Arab American? Should the field welcome work located in the Americas, but not necessarily in the United States? Should the field include scholarship that situates Arab Americans within broad coalitions such as MENA and AMEMSA? Papers on this panel are encouraged to interrogate the boundaries of scholarship on Arab Americans, opening up new spaces of inclusivity across geographic, linguistic, religious, and ethnic lines. New theoretical approaches to the category Arab American are also welcome.
Please send proposed paper title and an abstract of no more than 250 words to Matthew Jaber Stiffler (mstiffler@accesscommunity.org) by Friday, Jan. 30, 2015.
Successful panelists will be notified by Friday, Feb. 6. Selected authors must then submit all appropriate information to the myMesa portal by Feb. 15. Presenters must be MESA members by the time of submission to myMesa.
